Ong’s three phases of culture oral print electronic

Ong saw orality as a cultural system a historical era a medium of symbolic transmission an information network a ‘style’ an element of communications systems that followed

Ong’s features of oral culture: Memorization Concrete, rather than abstract Agonism Stock characters and phrases Participation Homeostatic Events and acts

Plato’s concerns about writing Writing destroys memory Writing is inhumane and artificial Writing is unresponsive Writing can’t defend itself Writing can’t control its audience

Writing restructures consciousness Epistemological changes (how we know what we know) Ontological shifts (how we think about or understand existence) Skepticism Temporal and spatial shifts

Print transforms society: Labour practices Capitalism Authority Visual materials Prose Stasis and the decline of Latin Indexing Privacy Spatial conventions Content expanded